Legalize Drugs? That's So Not GOP

FiveÂ Republican Party leadersÂ have written to gubernatorial hopeful Bill Weld to express their displeasure that he is seeking the Libertarian Party’s line.

Their argument? If Weld nets 50,000 on the Libertarian line, the party will get official status, and, given its ideology,Â life as we know it in New York will be in serious jeopardy:Â

“One look at the platform of the Libertarian Party demonstrates the controversy Republicans would face.”

Positions out of the political mainstream the Libertarian Party has taken include supporting an end to the American military as we know it today; supporting the legalization of unlawful drugs and prostitution; calling for an end to the legal drinking age; opposing general laws against pornography or obscenity; supporting full marriage rights to same-sex couples; calling for an end to all restrictions on immigration into the United States; and, supporting full amnesty for all illegal immigrants already here.

The Libertarian Party is holding its convention in Albany tomorrow. Weld willÂ be challenged for the lineÂ by gubernatorial candidate Donald Silberger, a SUNY New Paltz mathematics professor and an enrolled Libertarian.

Silberger told me this morning he’s not in favor of the Libertarians endorsing a candidate who doesn’t 100 percent espouse the party’s ideology only because he might get 50,000 votes and win the organization official status in the eyes of the state Board of Elections.Â

So he and the GOP leaders are kind of in agreement – in a weird sorta way. Far out.